On a barren island on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, workers have dug the foundations for three colossal museums: an $800 million Frank Gehry-designed branch of the Guggenheim 12 times the size of its New York flagship; a half-billion-dollar outpost of the Louvre by Jean Nouvel; and a showcase for national history by Foster & Partners, the design for which was unveiled on Thursday. And plans are moving ahead for yet another museum, about maritime history, to be designed by Tadao Ando.

Xenatec Maybach Cruiserio made its debut at Daimler headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. The coupe features a 600+ horsepower twin-turbocharged V12 engine. Only 100 examples will be made with a €675,000 ($894k) price tag. Waiting list 9-12 months.

Produced in Christofle’s ‘Haute Orfèvrerie’ workshops from 30 silver-plated Christofle spoons, this surprising but apparently effortless piece is one of the collection’s most charming. You can’t help feeling that the illustrious role call of Christofle’s historic clients (King Louis-Philippe, Napoleon III, the Tsar of Russia, the Emperor of Mexico, Pope Pius IX among them) would have approved.
This highly-collectible piece is available to buy only through 20ltd.com and is limited to only 20 editions

YVES SAINT LAURENT Suede court shoes with goat hair fringes. If Stefano Pilati presents this season a ready-to-wear collection inspired by the religion, it is completely different for the range of shoes which reveals its punk style ! Monachal dresses but crest, leopard or patent leather court shoes and vertiginous heels!

Cecil Beaton was one of the 20th century's most important photographers, and now for the first time ever, Assouline presents his private scrapbooks—personal collections of the man who helped invent the cult of personality.

Hermès and Bugatti have developed four new color schemes for their collaboration. The color options include ‘Indigo Blue and Vermilion,’ ‘Indigo blue and Lime Green,’ ‘Black and Garance Red,’ and ‘Prussian Blue and Blue Jean.’ The new models are priced at €1.55 million without taxes (approximately $2.77 million) and will be available at the end of the year.

Bandit is Robert Piguet's first fragrance, launched in 1944 as the perfect scent to create an aura of mischief. Provocative and sultry, this Chypre fragrance is an intense blend of exotic Leather, Wood, Spice and floral notes including Neroli, Orange, Ylang Ylang, Jasmine,Tuberose, Vetiver and Patchouli, finished with Musk.

From the streets of New York to the walls of its most prominent galleries, young graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) was catapulted to international fame in his early 20s and died of a drug-overdose at 27. The subject of a feature film by fellow artist Julian Schnabel, Basquiat is one of the most admired artists to emerge from the 1980s art boom. This book explores his short but prolific career.

“Punk elegance” (Elle USA), “Techno chic” (BUSINESSWEEK), “Larger than life” (CLEAR MAGAZINE) – the international critique of this rising star of furniture design is as effusive and inventive as the work itself. Attracting increasing attention since graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2000, Nika created her decisive splash with her notorious “Lolita” lamp, designed for Moooi and featured in NEW YORK TIMES STYLE magazine as one of the hottest trends for 2008. This was swiftly followed by her “5 O’Clock” collection being picked out by Ambra Medda, co founder and art director of Design Miami, as one of 12 most influential décor trends of the moment. The world according to Nika Zupanc is an intriguing one – the creation of this sit-on ‘child’s’ toy exclusively for 20ltd.com is an epitomizing tour de force of her cute originality. Playfully nostalgic for a time when children had physical friends as toys rather than digital enemies, it is surely any youngster’s most stylish first car. For the adults, it might be rather a chic means of arriving into dinner. Available exclusively through 20ltd.com, only 7 editions will ever be made.

Graduate of the Royal College of London, Mélanie Georgapoulos is a Greek and French young designer who, influenced by her sculpture formation, imagines luxurious jewels luxurious reflect of her passion for beautiful materials, forms and design. Her first collection uses pearls, the challenge being to reinvent a classic, to re-interpret in a modern and unique way the traditional necklace.

Bursting with radiant and unsettling juxtapositions, Neo Rauch’s paintings are wormholes into worlds of startling psychological power and cultural collisions. His scenes involve the viewer in a history that is at once mythic, intimate, and present. Through a deep consideration of philosophy, art history, literature, and his own dreamscape, Rauch’s paintings depict the precipices of progress and the struggles of communication. Electrified by their rich palettes, Rauch’s fragmented landscapes and timeless characters dance between pop and baroque, social and psychological, graphic and painterly.

Born in Leipzig in 1960, Rauch learned his trade behind the Iron Curtain. His influences and interests were shaped by personal hardship and the tumultuous changes of East Germany after the Wall fell. In the late 1980s, having finished his studies at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig under Arno Rink and Bernhard Heisig, he explored diverse approaches to painting in dialogue with works he encountered by Francis Bacon, the New Wild painters, and the pre-Renaissance painters he saw during his travels in Italy. By 1993, he had arrived at the unique style of intertwining figuration and abstraction that characterizes his oeuvre and has brought him international attention and respect.

Only a book of truly epic scale could begin to unpack the emotional, historical, and formal density of Rauch’s canvases. Comprising over 450 pages, including more than 250 large-scale reproductions, this monograph is the most inclusive collection of his work to date. It offers a generous range of writings that illuminate the personal, symbolic, and formal complexities of Rauch’s world. Wolfgang Büscher’s open and sensitive account of a walk through Rauch’s neighborhood reveals the painter’s compassion and modesty. Harald Kunde tracks Rauch’s stylistic development through its main semantic threads and historical influences. Gary Tinterow draws from his work on Rauch’s exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum to offer the reader a guide to the symbols that form the painter’s extensive mythology. These essays complement Rauch’s work with nuanced insights while allowing the images room to speak on their own. Within this atlas, readers will discover the rich density and enigmatic openness of Rauch’s paintings.

Fendi Peek-a-Boo Tote made of gray brown brushed python. The Brushed Python Tote has an optional detachable shoulder strap added to it and is available exclusively from Fendi stores in limited quantities.

Peter Ting deconstructs traditional Royal Crown Derby ‘Imari’ patterns and reassembles them into a contemporary collage. He works on the factory floor and personally creates each piece like a tailor - joining, matching, overlapping pattern upon pattern, colour against colour. Each piece may take up to 6 firings to achieve the desired depth of colour and vibrancy. He signs each piece (together with Royal Crown Derby Chairman Hugh Gibson), and after the final firing, all the 22 ct gold is burnished by hand ( a painstaking and labor intensive task, where all the gold is rubbed with damp silica sand, transforming the dull gold into a lustrous gleaming gilding). These seven individual one-off pieces have been created exclusively by Peter for 20ltd.com.

12.27.2010

Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry collection for the holiday season called Les Voyages Extraordinaires. The collection is inspired by the unique works Jules Verne and feature four pieces which include; the beauty of flora and fauna, imaginary creatures, sky and stars.

Alice Cicolini is a visual culture specialist: a designer, creative commissioner and producer, curator of several international touring exhibitions on design and a published author, including a book on contemporary British dandyism, The New English Dandy, for Thames & Hudson. Her exquisite jewellery – a unique example of east/west collaboration being handmade in India in the studio of one of the last Jaipuri meenakari trained in the enamel traditions of Persia, – is inspired by the sacred architecture and patterns of the Silk Route. This fabulous 24 ct gold, pink amethyst and enamel ring has been created exclusively for 20ltd.com and is available in only 5 editions.

In 1935, DC Comics founder Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson published New Fun No. 1, the first comic book with all-new, original material—at a time when comic books were mere repositories for the castoffs of the newspaper strips. What was initially considered to be disposable media for children was well on its way to becoming the mythology of our time—the 20th century’s answer to Atlas or Zorro. More than 40,000 comic books later, in honor of the publisher’s 75th anniversary, TASCHEN has produced the single most comprehensive book on DC Comics, in an XL edition even Superman might have trouble lifting. More than 2,000 images—covers and interiors, original illustrations, photographs, film stills, and collectibles—are reproduced using the latest technology to bring the story lines, the characters, and their creators to vibrant life as they’ve never been seen before. Telling the tales behind the tomes is 38-year DC veteran Paul Levitz, whose in-depth essays trace the company’s history, from its pulp origins through to the future of digital publishing.

Year-by-year timelines that fold out to nearly four feet and biographies of the legends who built DC make this an invaluable reference for any comic book fan.

‘Night Fetishes’ evening bag collection from luxury brand creator and grandson of the LVMH founder, Kilian Hennessy . Launching exclusively at Harvey Nichols.
Inspired by his partners use of her perfume box, Kilian designed these beautiful and unique clutches, each taking its name from the renowned ‘L’Oeuvre Noire’ fragrances, such as Invitation, Don’t be shy, Aphrodisiac, Prohibited and Surrender.

The By Kilian ’Night Fetishes’ collection is available exclusively in our London store.

Austrian glass artist and designer Tobias Berger and Natascha Marx have partnered up to create the world’s most luxurious glassware. Priced at €65,000 ($85,500) it’s also the world’s most expensive champagne glass.

Designed by Tauerngold, the hand-made glasses feature 180 grams of yellow gold. Set at the stem is a stunning 8.1 carat diamond.

Dom Pérignon exclusive collection of three bottles by the Design Laboratory at Central Saint Martin’s School of Art & Design that pays homage to Andy Warhol.

The project was inspired by a March 8, 1981, diary entry in which Warhol wrote: “Went to the gallery where they were having a little exhibition of the glittery Shoes, and had to do interviews and pics for the German newspaper and then we had to go back to the hotel and be picked up by the ’2,000′ people — it’s a club of twenty guys who got together and they’re going to buy 2,000 bottles of Dom Pérignon which they will put in a sealed room until the year 2,000 and then open it up and drink it and so the running joke is who will be around and who won’t.”